I spent five years at Forbes writing about business and leadership, attracting nearly one million unique visitors to Forbes.com each month. While here, I assistant edited the annual World’s 100 Most Powerful Women package and helped launch and grow ForbesWoman.com. I've appeared on CBS, CNBC, MSNBC and E Entertainment and speak often at conferences and events on women's leadership topics. I graduated summa cum laude from New York University with degrees in journalism and sociology and was honored with a best in business award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) in 2012. My work has appeared in Businessweek, Ladies’ Home Journal, The Aesthete and Acura Style. I live in New York City with my husband and can be found on Twitter @Jenna_Goudreau, Facebook, and Google+.

Back To the Stone Age? New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Bans Working From Home

New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has decreed there will be no more working from home for Yahoo staff. A company memo leaked to the press on Friday announced that Yahoo employees would no longer be permitted to work remotely. The decision seems to be based on a desire for increased productivity and a more connected company culture. It reads in part:

To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.

Hundreds of remote workers were asked to report to the office beginning June 1. If they can’t or don’t want to, too bad. Even occasional flexibility is being discouraged. The memo reads, “For the rest of us who occasionally have to stay home for the cable guy, please use your best judgment in the spirit of collaboration.”

Unsurprisingly, the announcement rankled quite a few Yahoo employees, as well as supporters of workplace flexibility. Flexible work arrangements, from telecommuting to flexible schedules and condensed workweeks, are viewed by many as the way of the future. Flexibility has become an important tool for time-crunched workers, particularly parents, to better juggle work and family responsibilities.

“It’s incredibly disappointing,” says Jennifer Owens, editorial director of Working Mother Media. “It’s a step backwards—a mindset from the days when Yahoo was launched.”

“I respect that Marissa is looking at ways to make [Yahoo's] workforce more productive and engaged in their jobs,” says Sara Sutton Fell, CEO of FlexJobs, a service that helps job seekers find flexible professional positions. “I just don’t agree that casting a blanket of blame on individual telecommuters is the right way to do it–nor is cancelling the whole program in one fell swoop.”

Mayer, 37, took the helm of struggling Yahoo last summer while five months pregnant. The new mom is the youngest CEO and one of only a handful of women CEOs leading Fortune 500 companies. When asked for details about the new policy and the rationale behind it, a Yahoo spokesperson wrote back, “We don’t comment on internal matters.”

Update: A Yahoo spokesperson sent the following statement on Tuesday, “This isn’t a broad industry view on working from home–this is about what’s right for Yahoo, right now.”

Mayer has so far taken a number of steps to turn the company around—revamping the homepage, renovating Yahoo Mail, releasing a new Flickr app and conducting a string of mobile acquisitions. Presumably she believes having all soldiers report for duty onsite will lead to increased performance. However, the idea that traditional face-time results in increased productivity seems little more than management bias.

“A variety of studies show that telecommuting and working from home is associated with higher productivity,” says David Lewin, management professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Analytically, it’s not at all clear this would benefit Yahoo. They could wind up with negative performance effects.”

Additionally, working from home—whether occasionally or full time—typically cuts out an hour or more of wasted commuting time every day, says Lewin. Not to mention, employees are so grateful for the flexibility that they’re often more loyal to the company than the 9-to-5ers. A 2011 study by nonprofit human resources association WorldatWork found that companies with stronger cultures of flexibility experienced lower turnover and increased employee satisfaction, motivation and engagement.

“It comes from fear,” says Owens. “Fear that if I can’t see you, I don’t know what you’re working on. It’s a distrust of your own workforce.”

Some are also speculating that Mayer’s little ultimatum may be a way to trim the fat. If remote workers decide to quit rather than comply, it’s a layoff without the associated costs. However, what could be a clever cost-cutting trick sends a dangerous message to the rest of the business community. Could this be the beginning of the end of telecommuting?

“I don’t believe we’ll see many other companies following suit,” says Amanda Augustine, job search expert for TheLadders, an online job-matching service for professionals. “This decision says more about the type of company (and culture) Mayer is planning to rebuild, and less about the state of telecommuting and flexible work schedules as a whole.”

Of course, some face-time will always be necessary and no one’s arguing that it disappear entirely. David Fagiano, COO of corporate training and consulting company Dale Carnegie Training, agrees with Mayer that some of the best ideas are fostered through casual conversations. However, he also notes that these conversations don’t have to take place in the same room. “With the internet being such a great tool in business today, it’s easy to hold a virtual meeting via Skype or to pick up the phone.”

With increasingly effective mobile and video conferencing technology there’s less and less need to be present in the physical workplace. Certainly, Yahoo could find alternatives to alienating hundreds of workers. Isn’t it a technology company?

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I admire her for making the gutsy calls and leading that company. I’m a proponent of WFH, but in this case she’s making the right call.

My take on her as a person and what she’s bringing to the table? Insightful and tough leadership which is exactly what is needed to save Yahoo! and make it relevant again.

What she’s lacking? I don’t think she has the creative vision necessary for what Yahoo! needs to pull it off. She needs to find her internal “Steve Jobs” or “Jonathan Ives” and FAST.

She’s got the guts, strength and determination to see this through and make the tough calls, even put a massive stamp on the culture to move it in the right direction (a la this WFH call). She needs creative vision and FAST.

Absolutely agree, Christine. As a CEO, Meyers’ first responsibility is to turn around an ailing F500 company, and she is doing exactly THAT!. She is not into modelling, and a turnaround is not business as usual, so let her be a good judge of what is right for Yahoo. It is’nt like office-work has died or that her decisions are forever. More power to her for taking a decision that makes sense, rather than be ruled by dogmas.

Waaaah! I cannot believe the immature reactions to this change, and the sniping of females against the female CEO making changes! Get real! “Insensitive to working parents?!!!!” I don’t recall any of my employers being ‘sensitive’ in any way, shape or form regarding my raising my children – myself! I had to be at work and on time and my kids went to daycare. Believe it or not, that’s what the working world has demanded of MOST OF US!

You people are ridiculous, whining about how you can’t work from home anymore. She’s the CEO and she is in charge. Contrary to popular belief, she does not ‘owe’ you anything, nor does the company. I suspect that the reason they have hired her to begin with is because of the complete loss of productivity in the company, in the guise of ‘creativity.’ Since when does being cut off from others encourage creativity? I believe that individuals can be creative on their own, but we also can be creative by interacting with others, bouncing ideas off of each other, and what I call ‘brainstorming.’ Some of my best ideas have come this way.

Grow up, people! No one is making you stay there, if you really just can’t handle the job, and many would love to have the one you are currently in. In MY working world, you do what you have to do to get the job done, you do what the employer tells you to do whether you like it or not…and they give you a paycheck for your efforts. I applaud Marissa Mayer for having the balls to make a move like this. Of course, it wasn’t going to be ‘popular,’ but she obviously feels it is necessary. I have to wonder how much those people were really getting done at home (for their job, that is). I suspect that the working-from-home idea was a failed attempt to make employees happy, but didn’t return the results that it should have.

Hello,if I may comment on this, home work issue, and infuse another post with it,1 I don’t know if the Internet is going to survive, so maybe bad idea to remote your business ,2 while the net is strong, why not use to teach kids about freedom, rather than , money/greed, so thanks

Marie Antionette has spoken: let her underlings eat cake. Why should she care that they don’t have an army of nannies and domestic staff at their beck and call as she does?

I understand Yahoo is in a bad way, but I fail to see how this edict will make it better, unless it is specifically geared toward weeding out those who have the audacity of putting their families over Yahoo.

Amazing I can’t recall when last I have even thought of Yahoo reading or using it untill I saw this headline. Makes them even less relevant best I tell some people or …. I don’t think so it just doesn’t matter.

Another “uptight white woman” who feels the need to control everything and everyone around her! Gee do ya think she makes her husband feel emasculated just a wee bit? This broad should have been checked out way better before Yahoo hired her to systematically destroy their company. Oh, and for the record… I AM a white woman myself.

This just angers me and disgusts me so much! I was divorced when my daughter was just 6 months old. I worked for a mortgage company from home and there were many a night when l would be nursing my infant daughter WHILE simultaneously taking a mortgage application! How did l compare to my “in house” fellow employees? I CONSISTENTLY ranked one of the top producers of qualified mortgage applications. I have worked at home also as a customer service rep and consistently was a top rated rep. This is a HUGE step backwards for Yahoo! Does Marissa know ANYTHING about human personalities? There are extroverts AND there are introverts. I worked from home as a necessity, being a single mom, though l am by nature an extrovert. However, MANY tech people (especially men) are introverts by nature and THRIVE under solitude! Putting them in an office full of “chatty Kathys”, NOT to mention the gossip, office politics, etc…and these VALUABLE BUT RECLUSIVE employees will be running for the door!